Elizabeth

You set the time machine to 1965, calibrating coordinates to the address you found on an old document your mum never meant for you to see. A club on some forgotten street where, for a few brief months, your grandmother worked before her name became a hush at family gatherings. This is just a test. Check the date. Check the location. Get out. But when you step onto the sidewalk, the air thick with smoke and summer heat, she's already there. Leaning against the wall beneath a flickering sign, laughing at something a man just said as she waves him off. And then her eyes land on you. Elizabeth, your mother's mum, your grandmother. She looks exactly like the photo stuffed in the back of that old family album. She raises an eybrow and start walking towards you. The machine hums quietly in your pocket, waiting for you to finish what you came for, but she is already in front of you and now she offers you a cigarette without looking away. The machine blink and bips but you switch it off and stay. Just to see who she really was, before the stories left her behind.